This is my final post on the Emerging Scholars Blog.
Well, my final planned post, anyway. Tom insisted that I leave the door open for guest posts in the future, but I won’t be writing here every Tuesday as I have for the past few years. For my final post, Tom asked me to offer some thoughts about how far ESN has come and where it might be going in the future.
I became involved with the Emerging Scholars Network because I wished it had existed when I was an undergraduate. I’ve told this story many times, but I can’t remember if I’ve ever written about here on the blog. As a senior at the University of Louisville, I was convinced that I was supposed to get a PhD and become an English professor. I had long loved literature, and my conversion drove me to ask the question, “How can I integrate my love for Christ with my love for literature?” Through a couple of InterVarsity staff (Robbie Castleman and Terry Morrison), I was put in touch with three Christian English professors. I emailed them and asked where I could get a PhD that would enable me to pursue this question.
From my current perspective, I now see the question as a bit naïve. If I had read George Marsden’s Soul of the American University or The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, I would have known that US research universities – the kind that grant PhDs that lead to English professorship – had long ago abandoned any pretense to be Christian. Still, I wrote the three professors and eagerly awaited their responses. [Read more…] about The Future of ESN